Paragon turnover doubles and losses shrink
PARAGON Entertainment, the Yorkshire group that has the rights to develop a series of ‘Hammer House of Horror’ visitor attractions, today said half year turnover has doubled to £4.56m.
The York-based business, which recently opened the first of its own attractions – the Quest indoor rope adventure course at the Westfield’s Merry Hill Shopping Centre in the West Midlands – reduced its pre-tax loss for the half year to the end of June to £1.3m, from £1.5m a year earlier.
The company said its core design and build activity is at record levels following new project wins and it has completed large projects including the ‘Me and My Body’ Gallery at Eureka!, Halifax, ‘Knights Quest’ at Alnwick Castle, the ‘Wallace and Gromit’ ride at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and ‘Museum of Rugby’ at Twickenham.
Mark Pyrah, chief executive, said that although the group is trading well it has reduced profit expectations for the second half of the year, due to the performance of its attractions division.
He added: “Our growth since admission to AIM in December 2011 has been substantial and we are now delivering more than twice our revenues at that stage.
“Throughout this year, we have continued to grow revenue in the ‘Design and Build’ business unit and have successfully filled our order book to the end of the year and into Q1 of 2014. We are focusing on margin management.
“During April, we fully opened our first attraction at Merry Hill which has not yet achieved profitability. We continue to investigate further attraction opportunities.”
